


Lady Greensleeves

by LadyRhiyana



Series: (Come Away) To the Waters and the Wild [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Post Season 7, cross-dressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-28 19:50:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16729647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRhiyana/pseuds/LadyRhiyana
Summary: In which Jaime escapes King's Landing with the help of a company of mummers. Brienne is - intrigued - by his disguise.





	Lady Greensleeves

The lumbering wagons, brightly painted with scenes from old songs, are painfully slow, rumbling and swaying over the jolts and ruts of the Kingsroad. Brienne – Ser Brien, she keeps reminding herself – and Podrick ride off to the side, her hand on the hilt of her sword, her eyes scanning their surroundings for danger. The rest of the escort – the sellsword Bronn and a group of Lannister deserters, survivors of the second Field of Fire still wearing their tattered crimson cloaks – keep station around the wagons, ready for anything. 

Snow has come to King’s Landing and the Crownlands, and travellers go heavily armed and in company or not at all. 

The mummers are every bit as gaudy as their wagons, clad in brightly coloured – though somewhat ragged – silks and velvets, some of them with rings in their ears or feathers in their hats; each one has a little gallant flourish to their apparel. They are bright-eyed and deliberately merry, extravagant in their speech and gestures, like gaudy tropical birds from the Summer Isles. 

A glint of gold catches Brienne’s eye, and she snatches yet another glance at the lead wagon where Mistress Jaina Hill sits bent over her sewing, her long golden hair falling over her green velvet gown and heavy cloak. 

Bronn rides up beside her, gives her his crooked, insolent smile. “Are you going to go over and talk to her, Ser Brien,” he asks, “or are you just going to stare longingly all the way to the North.”

She scowls at him. “I don’t –” but her fair skin betrays her and she blushes, her skin going splotchy red. “I’ve never –”

“Oh, aye,” Bronn says. “I can understand the appeal. That hair, and those eyes – she looks almost like the queen, doesn’t she?”

Brienne hisses angrily at him, but he only laughs. 

**

“Mistress Jaina,” Brienne says, riding over beside the wagon. “You are – quite good with a needle.” Beside the other woman’s radiant beauty, Brienne feels impossibly hulking and graceless. 

Mistress Jaina looks up, her eyes laughing. “When I was a little girl, ser,” she says, with a wicked smile – Brienne winces – “my septa said that I had a gift for it.” Her smile fades. “Now, of course,” she looks down at her hands, concealed by long, trailing sleeves, “it’s more difficult, left-handed.”

In truth, though Mistress Jaina does greatly resemble the queen, she is not – quite – the ideal picture of feminine beauty. She isn’t even truly beautiful – not the soft, gentle beauty of a highborn lady, living all her life behind castle walls. Her green eyes are laughing and sardonic, her mouth ever ready to curve in a cynical smile; she has crows’ feet at her eyes, and her skin is tanned from the sun. 

At some point, someone – a cruel lover, a husband she deserted perhaps – had even broken her nose. It adds character to her face, Brienne thinks helplessly. Stops her from being too – 

What Mistress Jaina has is presence. Men’s – and women’s – eyes are irresistibly drawn to her, and she can command a room with a gesture, or a word – when she steps onto their little makeshift stage, her hair radiant, the audience hangs on her every word. 

** 

After their first performance at an inn crowded with sullen, wary travellers, men had crowded up to speak to Mistress Jaina, their eyes eager and blurred with drink. Brienne had planted herself squarely in front of her, squared her shoulders and put her hand firmly on Oathkeeper’s hilt. 

“Such courage and gallantry, Ser Brien,” Mistress Jaina had purred afterwards, when they were safe back with the wagons. “What will you ask for your reward, I wonder?”

They were almost of a height. She had leaned into Brienne, her long golden hair smelling of herbs and lavender, falling about her like cool silk, and had brushed a kiss over Brienne’s cheek and smiled – no sweet, demure curve of her lips, but a sharp, wicked smile that cut like a knife. 

** 

Master Gaven Lantell – a big-bellied, grey-bearded man with a booming voice – is the leader of the motley company. He plays great kings and drunken buffoons with equal ease, imbuing both with surprising pathos; beneath his fur-trimmed cap with its curling white feather, his eyes are clear and direct. 

He had told the guards at the gates of King’s Landing that he was a Lannisport man, his company loyal men and women of the Westerlands. That much is true. What he failed to mention – as he later confides to Brienne – is that the company owed its beginnings to the patronage of young Lord Jaime Lannister. 

“Ser Jaime,” Brienne repeats, surprised. “Not Lord Tyrion?” 

Master Gaven laughs. “I’ll grant you, ser, Lord Tyrion would probably take more of an active interest, but yes – many years ago, when he was no more than a boy, Lord Jaime travelled with us for a while. And Lannisters always pay their debts.”

**

Slowly, the wagons rumbling along, the company of mummers and their escort makes its way north up the Kingsroad. Swift-riding patrols and messengers pass them on the way, searching for the Queen’s treacherous brother and spreading the word of his desertion, but they never think to search the mummers’ wagons for their quarry. 

Mistress Jaina, riding beside Brienne in her red velvet riding dress – riding astride, Brienne notes with private amusement – sometimes draws startled looks. But it takes only a delicate introduction – Mistress Hill, Master Gaven says – before the riders look away, embarrassed. 

** 

At night, Mistress Jaina and Brienne sleep in the lead wagon. 

(“Oh come, Ser Brien, the nights grow cold and lonely. They won’t mind if we bed down together,” Mistress Jaina had laughed, the first time she insisted Brienne join her.) 

They lay their bedrolls side by side and share their furs, and in the hidden intimacy of the wagon, before they blow out the lantern, Brienne turns to face her.

“Gods, Jaime,” she says, “how long do you mean to keep this up?”

**Author's Note:**

> So, this little ficlet is an attempt to pin down a wild plot-bunny. One day I might delve deeper into that long-ago time when young Lord Jaime - who really would have been indistinguishable from Cersei - ran away with a rag-tag group of mummers.


End file.
